The World According to Willie

Lowe's. A garishly lit, cavernous hangar of a place, easily capable of housing Air Force One and mysteriously devoid of any sales people. After three treks to the ill named Customer Service desk - tradesmen humor, I suppose - I'm tired, disgusted, and about out of patience. I find a set of double doors clearly marked Employees Only! No Admittance! and brazenly push my way through to confront a young man on a forklift. He immediately hops off and holds up one hand like a traffic cop.

“Ma'am!” he says, clearly startled, “You can't come in here!”

“No?” I say and take a defiant step forward, “Well, here I am and I'm not leaving until I can find someone to help me!”

He scurries toward me, hastily escorting me back onto the sales floor by the water heaters with an apologetic grin and asks how he can help.

“This,” I tell him, holding up a length of shiny silver pipe “is from the new stove. It doesn't fit the gas line. This,” showing him a length of corroded and discolored pipe, “fits the gas line but doesn't fit the new stove. I need an adaptor.”

He nods and tells me we need to go to the plumbing section and while I obediently follow him, he uses his cell phone to call ahead. Apparently this is how sales people communicate in home improvement warehouses.

“Willie,” I hear him say, “This is Jason. I'm walkin' a customer to you.” There's a brief pause and then he says, “Yup, be there in a minute.” I'm beginning to wish I'd brought breadcrumbs.

Jason is young, muscled up, bald as a cue ball and white. Willie turns out to be very tall, very thin and black. He has streaks of gray at his temples and a nice smile. When he finishes with the customer he's helping, he meets us and gives the two sections of pipe a critical look. He and Jason shake hands and it occurs to me that they may never have met until this moment. They have some discussion about threading and flaring, copper vs steel, and the general state of the world and then Juan, a heavy set, middle aged man with a Spanish accent arrives. Juan tells them they're in the wrong department, that adaptors would be back by the water heaters. Willie nods sagely and admits he might be right. Jason announces he needs to get back to his fork lift and wishes me good luck. Juan leaves us as well and Willie and I begin the journey back to the water heaters. It's a mean thought but I'm beginning to consider the possibility that it might've been easier to part the Red Sea.

In the end, I leave empty handed. Willie tries every adaptor on the shelf but to no avail. He apologizes that he can't help me and suggests I might have to have the gas line connector changed out, then gives the two sections of pipe a baleful look before reluctantly handing them back to me.

“I ain't sayin' it ain't out there,” he tells me ruefully, “I'm jist sayin' it ain't here.”

It seems to sum up the state of the world nicely.

A Small Theft

The icing on the cake of this nightmarish move is that while we are unpacking the van, the cur dog makes his escape through the garage door and cheerfully trots out onto the front lawn.

Odds that he will venture more than a few yards from Michael are so slim that neither of us pay much attention until I notice that he's wandered off to the yard next door and is quietly investigating what looks like a chunk of rock, nosing it around on the ground and watching it intently but not barking or showing any signs of aggression. I put down an armload of clothes and walk in his direction, intending to lead/haul/drag him back to his own yard and then I realize that the chunk of rock has ears and a tail and is moving. He's found a tiny, black and tan Yorkie and is very pleased with himself.

I scoop up this little bundle and with the cur dog protectively at my heels, walk back to our yard and into the house where I deposit him in one of the kennels for safekeeping. Michael's four dogs go a little mad with curiosity but he doesn't make a sound, content to sit wide eyed and alert and watch.

Upon closer inspection, we discover he's dirty and badly matted and has not been neutered.

He's not emaciated but he is thin and undernourished - I can feel his backbone - and while he has a collar, there are no tags attached. Even if I wanted to, there is no one to call. When we finish for the day, I tuck him under my arm and whisk him away for a bath and haircut from my friend, Jean, then take him home with me. He makes friends with my dogs at once and for the most part, ignores the cats. He sleeps on my lap and seems to be house trained but just in case, he spends the night in a spare kennel and makes no protest. You'd hardly know he was there.

Two days later, I see his picture on a lost dog post on social media but I don't rush to make contact with his owners. They write that he “usually” comes right back when they put him out unattended and this gives me serious pause. You don't routinely put a 5 pound dog out on a busy city street in a sketchy neighborhood without supervision and then get to be surprised when he doesn't come home. I struggle with this for all of 20 seconds before deciding that morally I need to do what it best for him and returning him isn't it.

My conscience twinges once or twice but my heart is ok with it.

Victory

“If you are faced with a mountain,” Vera Nazarian wrote in The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration, “you have several options.

You can climb it and cross to the other side.

You can go around it.

You can dig under it.

You can fly over it.

You can blow it up.

You can ignore it and pretend it's not there.

You can turn around and go back the way you came.

Or you can stay on the moutain and make it your home.”

And so we come to the end of a move that borders on the apocalyptic. Even on this second to last day, much remains to be done but we have survived - more or less intact - the onslalught of

the water department, the gas and electric companies, the hostile and mildly incompetent plumbers, the fence builders, the yard crew, the dazed, confused and afflicted carpenter, a hoard of electricians and handymen, the godless and evil cable company, even the relentless and raging stupidity of At&t. The packers and the movers have nearly bankrupted us. It'll take months to unpack, re-organize and settle into our raggedy new home. But despite it all, we're still on our feet. The dogs have gotten past their initial shock at being so inexplicably uprooted - both of Jimmy's escapes came to ignominious ends - and they're adjusting, albeit slowly. I suspect nothing will ever be the same again but life and the business will go on.

And that's what you call victory.

Lighthouses and Low Tide

Married life, so the islanders said, generously enough, hadn't much agreed with Minerva. She left at seventeen to wed a ferry boat captain from Grand Pre and was back at twenty-one. Folks said there was a hard gleam to her eyes that hadn't been there before but to Ruthie and I, she just looked a little pale, a little more tired. That summer she took up sketching and we would often come across her, sitting alone in the late afternoon light, filling her oversized manilla pad with drawing after drawing of the lighthouse, the incoming boats, the low tide, the Westport sunsets. The sketches were uncommonly realistic yet all seemed to share a subtle sadness, a barely discernible sense of loneliness. Ruthie and I were too young to comprehend it but we knew without being told, that Minerva was somehow hurt.

“She's fine,” Nana assured us, “She's findin' her way back is all. Best you leave her be.”

“Back to where, Nana?” we persisted and my grandmother frowned.

“Back to a happier time, mebbe,” she said briskly, “I reckon you'll understand when you're older.”

As far as Ruthie and I were concerned, the list of things we would understand when we were older was getting to be depressingly long but Nana was firm. She gave us each a quarter and we trudged obediently out to mind our own business and fill the wood box.

In due time, Minerva's sketches found their way into the community and as had been the way for generations, eventually into the hands of tourists, one of whom happened to work for a New York vanity press that made calendars as a sideline. Dumbstruck and not understanding what in heaven's name all the fuss was about, Minerva agreed to sell her sketches but turned down the offer to have them published. The New York agent, a brash and thoroughly obnoxious young man who favored painfully loud ties and spoke with an East River gangster-ish accent, shrugged, settled and wrote a check which got Minerva through the coming winter and halfway through the next. More importantly, it bought her enough time to find her way back and the spring she turned twenty-five, she announced she was to marry a second ferry boat captain, a strapping young man from Antigonish with a fondness for poetry and pencil drawings.

Going through some of my grandmother's things after her death, I came across a slim book with a paisley and gold cover and the words Happy Endings printed delicately on the binding. It was an elegant little thing and at first I thought I'd stumbled across a journal but it was a book of sketches with a few lines of poetry under each drawing. Minerva's name and that of her ferry boat captain were neatly inscribed on each page. It was dedicated, With love and gratitude for the journey and all those who helped along the way.

I don't have much use for sentimentality. I don't keep pressed flowers or baby shoes or old love letters. Besides the rocking chair that was a wedding present over 40 years ago and a box of needlework Christmas ornaments that I don't put out, there's little or nothing in this house from my childhood or my life before or after I was married. I have kept Minerva's little vanity press book though.  I often need reminding that people can change their minds and keep hope for happier times alive.